Monday, November 25, 2013

Does Swedish justice depend on who stands accused?

'Word against word' in Swedish Justice system. A new
analysis on the biased management of accusations regarding purported sexual misconduct on Swedish women. Would this depend on who is the accused, or who is the
prosecutor? In similar 'Assange cases', Swedish prosecutors deciding
differently

A Swedish top politician of the pro-US Swedish government party (Moderater)
member of the Parliament since 1998, has newly been acquitted by the
Swedish prosecutor authority – in record short time – of “crime
suspicions” regarding an alleged sexual misconduct against a 21 year-old
woman. The prosecutor that dropped the case based his conclusion on that
“word stands against word”, and that “evidence was not sufficient”. Meanwhile,
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the publicist known in the nation for
exposing wrongdoings of the Swedish government, is denied interrogation
in London and thus the dropping of his case continue being protracted –
also in record time, but instead for being longest. In both
cases “words stand against words”, and no evidence has been put forward.
In a third case, a leftist refugee from Chile, also an internationally
acclaimed opera singer which shadowed local artists, is sentenced to
years of prison in a similar case where “word stand against word”, and
while the court even recognizes that the word of the woman is tenable as
sufficient for a conviction.

By Marcello Ferrada de Noli

“The
Swedish Prosecution Authority is an independent organisation. It is
independent from both the courts and the police. The Prosecution
Authority, like all other Swedish authorities, is not a department in
the Ministry of Justice or any other ministry. Compared with many other
countries, the Swedish prosecutor is very powerful.” [Own presentation by the Swedish Prosecution Authority]

“Sweden
has the highest number of prosecutors in all Europe, which makes these
prosecutors to believe that they are ‘very powerful’, and also
“independent’. But facts deny their claims: The Swedish legal system has
NEVER protested for the multiple interferences by the government, e.g.
Reinfeldt, Bildt, Hägglund, etc. in the “legal” case against Assange.
What would Montesquieu say about the Swedish Prosecution Authority?” [Professors blogg in: “Duckpond in Swedish legal system”]

It should be noticed that the Swedish Prosecution Authority is only claiming being an independent organisation. This should be accurately interpreted as an organic, administrative independence. They of course do not claim, for they cannot claim, that their decisions
are independent of the Swedish political establishment – of which they
are a part. Neither independent of the geopolitical interests of Sweden,
that is supposed to be determined by the executive and legislative
powers. As this is to be read by a standard informed international
forum, it would be needless to add that the centre of those geopolitical
decisions is found long away Sweden’s territory or truly national
interests.

Case 'word against word' 1 – The case against Mr Gunnar Axen

During
a recent visit to Sweden, I had the opportunity to read a brief
dispatch mentioning whereabouts of Mr Gunnar Axen, a former consultant
at JKL, [1] and member of the Swedish Parliament for the right-wing conservatives party (Moderater, the political party of Reinfeldt and Carl Bildt, at the head of government).

According
to a dispatch in Svenska Dagbladet [SvD] on the 23 of October 2013, it
has been revealed that the Prosecution authority had initiated a
preliminary “crime” investigation on Gunnar Axen. The background being,
says SvD, "that a 21-year-old woman in Östergötland filed the politician
for sexual molestation.” [2]
The legal case against Axen was rapidly handed over to the National
Prosecution Directory for Police Internal Affairs (“Riskenheten för
polismål”).

I
recognized his name because of a few things: One was that Axen came to
“overt” politics at a time he has been working as at JKL, a major
Swedish PR company focused on “strategic communications”. JKL was most
known for their lobby amid the Swedish defence establishment on behalf
of the multinational armament giant BAE systems, based in London
(another adviser on JKL’s payroll is the former “social democratic”
Prime Minister of Sweden, Göran Persson. This is Sweden). [3]

But
mainly, I remember Gunnar Axen’s deeds in politics from the times I was
active in the movement opposing to the “Swedish” surveillance
legislation (FRA-lagen).[4] Axen was one among the Swedish politicians that voted for this shameful law [5]
and therefore his name accounted in what was to be known as “The list
of the 143 that sold the Kingdom of Sweden to foreign interests”. [6]
Also, some years ago, he was the one that presented at the Swedish
Parliament the proposition to legalize Taiwan’s stand at United Nations
in a number of activities, an initiative originally agitated by the US
government.

In
only about three weeks, on the 17 of November 2013, the Swedish
Prosecutor could announce that no further investigation was to be
pursued on the case against Axen because “word stands against word”,
and there were no evidence. Chief-prosecutor Mr Mats Ericsson (same
prosecutor-rank than Ms Marianne Ny, the prosecutor in the Assange
case), concludes as the reason for dropping the case: "There are two
versions of what happened", and "there is no sufficient evidence"
[See the red-underlined text on the image below, from SvD; "Det finns
två olika versioner om vad som hände"; and "tillräckligt med
stödbevisning"].

Dagens Nyheter would refer, in the same line, that the prosecutor of the case expressed, “word stands against word”

Predictability at “Riskenheten för polismål”

I
followed the Axen case, as soon as I learned of it, for its
similarities with the “Swedish case against Assange”, partly about a
political scenario, and partly the purported allegations without
evidence [I retake the “evidence” issue further down]. But here in the
Axen case instead, my guessing since an early stage was that an
acquittal would have been, as it is indeed, incumbent. Why?

At
a difference with some democratic countries in the West, in Sweden the
accusations incriminating the political and judiciary establishment
(MPs, judges of higher courts, etc.) are not objects of “standard
justice”; their cases are given instead to the National Prosecution
Office for Police Internal-Affairs [Riskenheten för polismål].
This institution has a record of “case dropped”, which I believe must be
worldwide: 97 per cent of the reported criminal-behaviour cases do not
result in trial, according to that Prosecutor authority's ownstatistics for the last available year 2011. Besides, in this graphic done by the said Riskenheten för polismål
we can observe two things clearly: a) 58 % of the cases were dropped
without any investigation; b) 39 % of the cases were investigated but
not pursued at the court, and dropped too.

Meanwhile,
an independent academic study revealed that only 1 % of the reported
cases with accusations of criminal behaviour from the part of the police
lead to some form of penalizing. The study, using materials from the
Southern region of Sweden, found that over half of the cases were
dropped at once "without preliminary investigation"; being "Not reason
to believe offense is subject to public prosecution" and "Crime can not
be proved", the leading causes for the sinking of the cases. [7]

With
the above said, I am not implying that the Axel case should be
considered otherwise, and not being dropped by the prosecutor; not at
all. And it is not that I do not have sympathies - apart of course of
his political stance - for Axen’s personal situation. In my
understanding, it is not the first time he has been a victim of
unfounded rumours. In 2008, after a prosecutor’s investigation, Axen was
acquitted of suspicions about allegations of domestic violence. His
own political peers, possibly seeking his post in office, spread these
rumours, according to Axen and several others.[8]

[It
would also be fair to add that Gunnar Axen is one of the few Swedish
politicians that has contributed to the campaign for the release of
journalist Dawit Isaak, detained in Eritrea.]

Case 'word against word' 2 – The case against Mr Julian Assange

Yet
for me, the most striking about that referred episode of Gunnar Axen by
2008, it was the “revelation” that Swedish prosecutors do initiate secret investigations on people – without informing the accused - based solely in anonymous communications “on behalf” of a woman; which it is more likely, using a woman
for the sake of the smear. And here we have also a striking similarity
with the so-called Assange case. In my understanding, one of the “Two
woman accusers” was led to make declarations at the Police Station in
Stockholm, in a trap-scenario; not being clear at all that her first
intention was to file a criminal complain against Mr Assange.

Moreover,
after the first prosecutor in the case clearly dismissed the case, this
was later “re-opened” at the initiative of the law firm Bodström and
Borgström. Being Thomas Bodström a former minister of Justice of the
Swedish government; and this is a government whose corrupted
subservience towards the Intelligence services of a foreign power – as
seen in the secret deals with the CIA on the illegal extraditions of
political refugees – has been heavily targeted by the WikiLeaks
exposures. The other main partner in the law firm, Claes Borgström, is a
nation-wide fanatic [9]
“feminist-activist” for the radicalization of the legislation of rape
(regarding exactly the same items that the “accusations” against Mr
Assange are allegedly about).

Another
known activist pursuing the same agenda in the “group of experts”
called by the government to study the reform of the sexual-offences law,
is nothing less than Chief Prosecutor Marianne Ny, who reopened the
case against Mr Julian Assange at the initiative of her ideological
colleagues, the social democratic politicians Borgström & Bodström
in the “feminist” struggle for radicalize the penalization of sexual
offences.

In this political struggle, as it has been recognized by Borgström with those terms, [10] it has also been publicly recognized by the leaders of such campaign that [the case] Julian Assange “is a symbol”. [11] It should be recalled that, in conjunction with the
events leading to the falsified accusations against the WikiLeaks
founder, he was invited to Stockholm by the same religious-ideological
group inside the Social democratic Party, known as “The Brotherhood”,
where Thomas Bodström is a conspicuous top member and one of the nominal
women-accusers was the political secretary at the time of the
accusations.

And
it gets “better”, Irmeli Krans, the police officer that took the
declarations of one of the Assange accusers, is also a social democratic
politician and member of the same ideological group mentioned above. [12]
Police Officer Krans “happened to be” on duty at the very moment in
which the leading “woman-acusser” happened to take the other woman over
that very Police Station in Stockholm for “a consultation visit”
(originally, the visit only intended to do inquests about the
possibility on whether it was possible to legally force Assange to take
an STI test). This last woman did not know at that point that it was a
matter of a criminal filing against Julian Assange. Police Officer
Krans has been exposed afterwards as a confessed admired of the work of
Claes Borgström, at the time the lawyer of the plaintiffs.

Irmeli Krans: "Claes Borgström is a worth-admiring and extremely knowledgeable lawyer. I am proud he is a social democratic"

And
as I observed above, it is about the same Claes Borgström that took the
initiative of asking Marianne Ny to reopen the case against the
WikiLeaks founder, after that it has been dropped (like in the case of
the commented Gunnar Axen’s) by Prosecutor Eva Finné. More? Here in the
picture below:

Close-up of a picture published by Irmeli Krans in her homepage, posing around Thomas Bordström in the company of other police officers

Kafka

And
there are further similitudes with the “Assange case”. Gunnar Axen
described himself in an interview he gave in Almedalen to Resumé
(2008-07-10) that he has been victim of “a Kafka-like process”; and that
“The campaign has been spread with professional precision and the media
were not slow to catching on”. [13]
Which recall immediately memories of the “Prataomdet” campaign –
devised by right-wing “feminist” journalists, in the payroll of both the
government and the right-wing media monopole of Bonniers. For this
anti-Assange mini-crusade, the campaigners were awarded a national prize
by the official cultural establishment.

However,
analysing these cases in a political perspective, the difference in
their “legal” managing from the part of the Swedish authorities emerges
well defined.

In
the context of Sweden, being the European government that most
fervently defends and represent the interest of the US, NATO and NSA,
against the dignity and integrity of its own citizens – mine included;
the government that has been sanctioned by the United Nations for
violation of the Absolute Ban on Torture, due to their servile
collaboration with the CIA’s illegal extradition flights. In this
context, government-politicians friendly to that policy are rapidly acquitted – without further investigation ­– by the Prosecution Authority of Sweden.

But
what happens with those that expose in front of the whole world, both
the Swedish government’s geopolitical subservience, and the war
atrocities of the superpower that the Swedish establishment serves?

Assange
has been consecutively incommunicado, detained in house-arrest, or
confined at an Embassy in London for long over one thousand days.

The
Swedish Prosecution Authority has all the means, grounded both in the
written law of Sweden and in previous and repeatedly praxis, to perform
an interrogation of Assange in London. They won’t do that. Not because
is not legal procedure, as they tried to misinform the international
forum in the beginning. They shall not do it because that will end in
the subsequent dropping of the “Assange case” – as it was in the Axen
case. And that would mean freedom for the WikiLeaks founder and its main
activist and decision-maker. And this would possibly mean further
revelations exposing unfair, antidemocratic, or plainly criminal
war-behaviour from the part of Sweden’s real rulers, at both sides of
the Atlantic.

Case 'word against word' 3 – The case against Mr Tito Beltrán

Tito Beltrán is a political refugee from Chile. He is also a worldwide known opera tenor.

He
was accused of sexual offences against a Swedish woman. One of the
particularities of the case it was that the accusation was done eight years
after the events it referred. Another feature it was that the lawyer
defending the plaintiff was the social democratic politician and former
minister of Justice Thomas Bodström. The same person in the anti-Assange
clique described above. He once boasted from his blog
(“Bodströmsamhället“) based in Virginia, USA,” that it was his law firm
the one acting in representation of the plaintiffs against Julian
Assange. He is also known as one main responsible of the ignominious
secret collaboration with the CIA – at the time he was Minister of
Justice in the government of the current JKL-consultant Göran Persson –
devised to facilitate the illegal “extraordinary rendition” of two
political refugees in Sweden to be transported for torture in Egypt. The
reader does not need to wonder if any prosecutor has ever indicted
Thomas Bodström for that atrocity, or for that part any Swedish
authority. For this is Sweden. And the sort of “independency” of the
legal system, including the Prosecution Authority, is resumed at the
introductorily text in this analysis.

The
“evidence” mentioned later in the verdict against Beltrán referred to
declarations of two friends of the plaintiff which would “have heard”
the word from the part of the plaintiff after the alleged
happenings. It was “word against word”. Also in this case, it was not
the plaintiff who has made a complaint to the police against Beltrán. It
was another woman (Monica Dahlström-Lannes, known in Sweden as activist
and campaigner concerning sexual-offence cases) [14] who after her own private investigations and interviews on the case filed the complaint to the police – nine years after!

In the “word-stands-against-word” case of Tito Beltrán, the legal system of Sweden sentenced him to years of prison. The verdict
stated: “According to this court, we found the plaintiff’s story
credible and that fully meets the requirements to form the basis for a
conviction”. [15]

It
could be argued that the cases of Beltrán, Axen, and Assange, would be
different, for instance attending to the grade of penalty implied in the
alleged accusations. For it has not to be forgotten that about Mr
Assange, as in the case of Mr Axen, there are only allegations,
purported behaviours “worded” even by third parties and where a
political motivation could be traced effortlessly. In both cases, no one
has come with any evidence – and if that evidence would actually exist,
as in an infantile fashion is suggested in sites of the “legal system”
- they would have been charged (in the case of Jukian Assange, for over
three years ago).

Nevertheless,
the focus of this analysis has been the diverse attitude of the
prosecution authorities, that, when confronted with the same “word
against word” paradigm, would rule diverse according to the political
factors at stake. For what other factors are those identified,
paramount?

Treisiroon,
in commenting a previous analysis published in Profesors blogg, had
these, in the context above, very fitting remarks:

“In
the case of Mr Assange, Sweden has time and again violated its own
procedures and laws. The Swedish State is both persecuting Assange and
failing in its responsibilities to the Swedish women involved in the
case. A hard analytical look at what (and who) has brought us to this
point is fully justified”. [16]

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